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Saturday, April 30, 2016

ECB QE Boost Can't Save Euro Bonds From Worst Month Since August. The
first month of the European Central Bank’s expanded stimulus program
has done little to aid the region’s government bonds. Even
as the ECB increased its asset-purchase program to 80 billion euros
($92 billion) in April, from 60 billion euros, sovereign securities
headed for their biggest monthly decline since August, according to
Bloomberg World Bond Indexes. “The whole notion of the ECB stepping up their purchases in April and
May has already been front run,” said Martin van Vliet, senior
interest-rate strategist at ING Groep NV in Amsterdam. “So people are
starting to look at new drivers and what is important now is the steady
ascent of oil prices and that is starting to feed through into inflation
expectations.”

Iraq Declares State of Emergency as Protesters Storm Parliament. Iraq declared a state of emergency in Baghdad after supporters of
Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr stormed parliament, the Interior
Ministry said. Mobile-phone video footage broadcast on Iraqi news
channel al-Sharqiya showed hundreds of al-Sadr’s supporters inside the
legislature on Saturday. Al-Sadr earlier on Saturday accused lawmakers
of sectarianism in their selection of ministers and ordered his bloc to
withdraw from the parliament session where members were preparing to
finish voting on a new cabinet.

Dollar Takes Helm of Global Markets After Worst Week Since 2008. The dollar is plunging so far, so fast, its shockwaves are
reverberating far beyond the $5.3-trillion-a-day foreign-exchange
market. The greenback plunged the most this week since 2008 versus
the yen after economic reports trailed forecasts, damping the outlook
for growth as Federal Reserve policy makers await evidence needed to
justify more interest-rate increases. The U.S. currency has eroded more
than half its 9 percent surge last year, with one measure of dollar
momentum approaching a level that indicates to some analysts that it is
oversold and set to reverse direction.

Oil Market Deja Vu Triggers Predictions of a Return to $30. (video)Oil’s climb above $45 a barrel is reassuring influential figures from
BP Plc to the International Energy Agency that the industry is finally
recovering from the worst slump in a generation. Others say the market
is about to fall into the same trap as last year. There’s a sense
of deja vu at Commerzbank AG, BNP Paribas SA and UBS Group AG, who say
crude’s gain of about 70 percent from a 12-year low in January resembles
the recovery that took hold this time last year -- only to sputter out
by May as the supply glut endured. Prices will sink back towards $30 a
barrel in the coming weeks, BNP and UBS warn.

The Climate Police Escalate. A subpoena hits a think tank that resists progressive orthodoxy. Sometimes we wonder if we’re still living in the land of the free.
Witness the subpoena from Claude Walker, attorney general of the U.S.
Virgin Islands, demanding that the Competitive Enterprise Institute
cough up a decade of emails and policy work, as well as a list of
private donors.

Barron's:

Had bullish commentary on (ENR), (FRGI), (JCP), (FFIV) and (MSG).

Fox News:

Cruz team attacks Trump for touting Tyson endorsement, while in Indiana. (video) The campaign for Sen. Ted Cruz and one of its PACs are attacking
rival Donald Trump for his allegiance to former pro boxing champion Mike
Tyson, who was convicted of rape in Indiana, which holds a primary
Tuesday. The Trusted Leadership PAC has released an online
video pointing out that Trump said Tyson, a Trump supporter, was
“railroaded” in the 1991 conviction. “One of the leaders in the effort to keep Tyson out
of prison is Donald Trump,” a TV news-reader is heard saying in the
30-second video, over archived moving and still pictures of Trump,
including one of him beside Tyson.

CNBC:

For Trump, why Goldwater history will repeat itself in the fall. (video)
Donald Trump
supporters and some pundits like to fantasize that the real estate
magnate will put blue states like New York, Massachusetts and California
in play this fall against Hillary Clinton while also running strong in
the industrial Midwest. Trump could win! It's not gonna happen. Trump, should he lock down the
nomination next week by winning Indiana, will go into the fall campaign
as the most toxic Republican nominee since Barry Goldwater in 1964.

The market's most crowded trades could be causing dangerous bubbles. The main culprit is the new reach for yield.
With low returns in many asset classes and yields on many bonds in
developed markets heading negative, there has been a need to push into
risky, higher yielding assets to make up the difference. "People are hiding out in stocks that they think are safe,
growing assets and that is looking like it's under pressure," said
Bailer. This causes dislocations in the market as certain companies end
up with much higher valuations than would be reasonable. Bailer mentioned both dividend paying defensive stocks and high growth names that have exploded higher recently (think FANGs) as areas he sees as particularly pressured.

Dallas Fed cautions on fresh oil bubble as glut keeps building. The US Federal Reserve has warned that the world is awash
with excess oil and starting to run out of places to store the glut,
with no sustained recovery in sight for the oil industry until 2017 at
the earliest. Robert Kaplan, head of the Dallas Fed, poured cold water over talk of
a fresh oil boom this year and said the US shale industry has taken far
longer to cut output than many expected. “As we sit here today, Dallas Fed economists estimate that global
daily oil production exceeds daily consumption by more than 1m barrels
per day,” he told the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum
in London. “Excess inventories in the OECD member countries now stand at
approximately 440m barrels. This is a record level and has raised
concerns about whether there is sufficient storage capacity in certain
geographic areas,” he said.

EU Referendum: Poll shows Britain split 50/50 - but higher turnout among older voters could tip country into Brexit. The over-65s are the age group most likely to vote - and most likely to vote to leave the EU. The
British public is split 50/50 on whether to leave the EU but a higher
turnout among the Outers could tip the balance in favour of Brexit,
according to an opinion poll for The Independent. Given a
straight choice, 50 per cent of people said Britain should leave and 50
per cent that it should remain. But when the findings were weighted to
take account of people’s likelihood to vote, the result changed to 51
per cent for Leave and 49 per cent for Remain. The online survey of
2,000 people by ORB, conducted between Wednesday and Friday (29),
suggests that Barack Obama’s intervention in the debate has not been the
game-changer the In camp was hoping for. Although 23 per cent said
his support for the UK remaining in the EU had made it more likely they
would vote to stay in, 66 per cent said it had not. And 45 per cent said they had felt more inclined to vote to leave in the past seven days, while 43 per cent were more inclined to support remaining.

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